LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MEN AND GIRLS: GENDER REPRESENTATION IN WOODY ALLEN’S MANHATTAN, HUSBANDS AND WIVES, AND CAFÉ SOCIETY A Senior Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in American Studies By Anna Read Masino Washington, D.C. April 17, 2019 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MEN AND GIRLS: GENDER REPRESENTATION IN WOODY ALLEN’S MANHATTAN, HUSBANDS AND WIVES, AND CAFÉ SOCIETY Anna Read Masino Thesis Adviser: Matthew Tinkcom ABSTRACT Woody Allen established himself as a household name in the 1960s. His half-century long career is celebrated for its generation of numerous memorable female characters and sullied by back-to-back scandals in 1992. For 25 years following an accusation of child molestation Woody Allen continued to produce films and exist as one of the most distinguished directors of all time. In October of 2017 Hollywood was rocked by the viral, sexual assault awareness campaign, #MeToo. In the wake of #MeToo, Hollywood and the online court of public opinion awakened by the viral campaign is using #MeToo as an opportunity to reevaluate a century-old industry and its many players. Woody Allen is amongst the Hollywood-elite being called into questioning over issues of gender representation and sexual assault. Inspired by the dialogue opened by #MeToo, this senior thesis takes a closer look at Woody Allen, and three of his films produced over the last sixty-nine years he has been active, as a means to better understand gender in Hollywood. Through an analysis of Manhattan (1979), Husbands and Wives (1992), and Café Society (2016), paired with an investigation of Allen’s biography, critical reception to his films, and an incorporation of auteur and autobiography theory, I found that Allen is able to exist as both a lover of women and an accused sexual assault perpetrator in a way that other Hollywood directors are not. He can, and does, exist as both uniquely celebratory of and intensely creepy towards women, and he is able to do this because of the form and content of his films. The genre of his films allows him to exist simultaneously as problematic and innovative in ii terms of gender representations. The types of female and male characters he creates, in the content of his films, exemplify his anomalous status in Hollywood. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank: My parents, Chris Masino and Jennifer Gilbert, for being a constant source of inspiration and for teaching me that art is important. Colva Weissenstein, for validating my concerns and my ideas, and for taking this as seriously as I did. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you. Professor Erika Seamon and all my American Studies classmates, for reminding me again, and again, how lucky I am to be at Georgetown. iv If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job. - Woody Allen v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 PART I: BACKGROUND AND THEORY Chapter I: Woody and Women ................................................................................... 16 Chapter II: Theoretically Allen ................................................................................... 33 PART II: FILM ANALYSIS Chapter III: The Films ................................................................................................ 52 Chapter IV: Films in Conversation.............................................................................. 89 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 99 Bibliography and Filmography ................................................................................. 110 vi INTRODUCTION There is very little that is mysterious about Woody Allen. Scandalous, yes, but mysterious, no. Woody Allen doesn’t hide. He’s made a career out of being open about his anxieties, sexual obsessions, and personal dilemmas. Sure, Woody Allen is a private guy. He’s relatively shy when it comes to paparazzi and reluctant when it comes to interviews. And sure, there is a mystery, of sorts, in the 1992 accusations that Allen abused his then 7-year-old daughter, Dylan, in the attic of her Connecticut home.1 He denies all accusations; she denies his denials.2 There is no way for us to know, conclusively, what happened, which means that the mystery of the sexual assault is not a mystery that we can solve. Woody Allen, himself, though, has been a pretty open book for the entire time he’s been in the public eye. He’s shared his anxieties, histories, personalities, and relationships with us in stand-up routines, plays, films, and interviews. He tells us exactly who he is. More than that, he shows us. Woody Allen has been called a lot of things, most of it valid, but he’s never been mysterious, which begs the question, why study him? If nothing is hidden what is there to look for? It appears that Allen hasn’t anything to hide, which speaks more to a lack of shame than a lack of scandal. I do think Allen’s transparency offers us the opportunity to uncover something about gender representation in Hollywood that is hidden, which is to say that Allen’s lack of mystery is exactly the reason I want to study him and his films. 1Sopan Deb and Deborah Leiderman, “Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn, Dylan Farrow: A Timeline,” The New York Times, January 31, 2018, accessed April 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/movies/woody-allen-mia-farrow-dylan-farrow-a-timeline.html. 2Zach Schonfeld, “Woody Allen Denies Dylan Farrow Abuse Allegations: ‘I Never Molested My Daughter’,” Newsweek, January 18, 2018, accessed April 11, 2019, https://www.newsweek.com/woody-allen-dylan- farrow-abuse-allegations-i-never-molested-my-daughter-784377. ; Lisa Respers France, “Dylan Farrow details alleged abuse by Woody Allen in her first televised interview,” CNN, January 18, 2018, accessed April 11, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/18/entertainment/dylan-farrow-woody-allen-interview/index.html. 1 Allen’s openness hasn’t stopped anyone from writing about him. He is, after all, one of the most distinguished directors of all time.3 He is more legend than man now, and in 2018, more cautionary tale than folktale. Aside from the deluge of Allen-related editorial writing released in the midst of #MeToo, Allen is written about for a lot of things. He’s written about as a filmmaker, as a comic, as a Jew. Biographies about him tend towards the celebratory or salacious. There are also works focusing extensively on representations of women his film. Richard Feldstein compiles an expansive, although cursory, analysis of Allen’s female representation in his Displaced Feminine Representation in Woody Allen’s Cinema.4 His analysis, published in 1989, deals significantly with Allen’s earlier work but is helpful in its overview of some of Allen’s most famous female characters. Woody: Movies from Manhattan, by Julian Fox, chronicles Allen’s work until 2005. His essays on Manhattan and Husbands and Wives provide me important historical insights and an overview of critical and public responses. Here there is greater focus on the intersection of Allen’s personal life with his films.5 Perspectives on Woody Allen compiles reviews and essays on Allen’s work up until 1996 as it intersects with autobiography, Jewishness, comedy, and genre.6 Similarly, But We Need the Eggs, by Diane Jacobs, provides cursory analysis of a great number of Allen’s films but was 3“Woody Allen Awards,” IMDb, accessed April 11, 2019, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000095/awards. 4Richard Feldstein, “Displaced Feminine Representations in Woody Allen’s Cinema,” in Discontented Discourses: Feminism/textual Intervention/psychoanalysis, ed. Marleen S. Barr, and Richard Feldstein (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 69-86. 5Julian Fox, “1992-95: Husbands and Wives to Mighty Aphrodite” in Woody: Movies from Manhattan (Overlook Press, 1996), 227-232. 6Renée R. Curry, Perspectives on Woody Allen (London: Prentice Hall International, 1996). 2 published in 1982 and does not address gender thoroughly.7 These works provide my research with important background information but lack depth in regards to gender specifically and how gender representations intersect with Allen’s personal life. My question will address this gap. Woody on Rye: Jewishness in the Films and Plays of Woody Allen features two important essays on Allen’s depictions of women. “Woody’s Women: Jewish Domesticity and the Unredeemed Ghost of Hanukkah to Come,” by Giovanna P. Del Negro, focuses on the gentile- Jew relationships of Allen’s films, and “Toot Toot Tootsie- Disposable Women in the Films of Woody Allen,” by Elliot Shapiro, focuses on the role of women in Allen’s post 1990s films as sex workers or victims of murder. Learning and Laughing about Gender and Sexuality through Humor: The Woody Allen Case is one of the most comprehensive scholarly works surrounding my topic.8 In that work, Andreas Philaretou addresses Allen’s use of comedy as a tool with which to deconstruct traditional gender arrangements. In its neglect of Allen’s personal life, however, it does not broach my topic completely. Christopher Knight, in his “Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”: domesticity and its discontents” and “Woody Allen’s Annie Hall: Galatea’s Triumph Over Pygmalion,” provides necessary analysis of two important Allen films that I have not chosen to investigate myself.9 His work offers me analysis of films before and between the ones I’ve chosen. One article that does focus on a film I will be researching is “The Treacherous and The Good: Two Views of Women,” by James Wall, which discusses portrayals 7Diane Jacobs, But We Need the Eggs: The Magic of Woody Allen (New York: St. Martins Press, 1982). 8Andreas G. Philaretou, “Learning and Laughing about Gender and Sexuality through Humor: The Woody Allen Case,” The Journal of Men’s Studies (March 1, 2007), accessed October 09, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.1402.133.